by Orson Scott Card
Release Date: November 2008 (First Edition)
January 2012 (First Mass Market Edition)
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Description: Ender in Exile is a direct sequel to Ender’s Game and it is followed by Speaker for the Dead. It begins with the short story Ender’s Homecoming from Card’s webzine Intergalactic Medicine Show. Other Ender’s Game short stories that were published elsewhere are included as chapters of this novel, including: A Young Man with Prospects, Ender in Flight and parts of The Gold Bug.
“In Ender’s Game, the world’s most gifted children were taken from their families and sent to an elite training school. At Battle School, they learned combat, strategy, and secret intelligence to fight a dangerous war on behalf of those left on Earth. But they also learned some important and less definable lessons about life.
After the life-changing events of those years, these children—now teenagers—must leave the school and readapt to life in the outside world.
Having not seen their families or interacted with other people for years—where do they go now? What can they do?
Ender fought for humanity, but he is now reviled as a ruthless assassin. No longer allowed to live on Earth, he enters into exile. With his sister Valentine, he chooses to leave the only home he’s ever known to begin a relativistic—and revelatory—journey beyond the stars.
What happened during the years between Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead? What did Ender go through from the ages of 12 through 35? The story of those years has never been told. Taking place 3000 years before Ender finally receives his chance at redemption in Speaker for the Dead, this is the long-lost story of Ender.”
Book Length: 480 pages (Tor mass market edition)
Reviews: “Set between Card’s Hugo and Nebula–winning Ender’s Game (1985) and Speaker for the Dead (1986), this philosophical novel covers familiar events, but puts new emphasis on their ethical ramifications. In the wake of his victory over the alien Formics, 12-year-old military genius Ender Wiggins is hailed as a hero, but governments opposed to the International Fleet, which trained him, intend to portray him as a monster. Ender winds up as titular governor of one of the new human colonies, where he struggles to adapt to civilian life and ponders his role in the deaths of thousands of humans and an entire alien species. His agonized musings aren’t always sophisticated but possess a certain gravitas. Fans will find this offering illuminating, and it’s also accessible to thoughtful readers new to the series.” -Publisher’s Weekly
“Adult/High School—Here is Card’s answer to all those readers who asked, ‘What happened to Ender?’ between Ender’s Game (1985) and Speaker for the Dead (1986, both Tor), a gap that covers nearly 3000 years. Twelve-year-old Ender Wiggin should be coming home to a hero’s welcome after wiping out the dreaded buggers—aliens who have twice defeated humanity in the past—in a fierce space battle. He is instead proclaimed a dangerous weapon and appointed titular governor of a colony world to keep him as far away from Earth as possible. His beloved sister Valentine joins him on the colony ship but is unable to penetrate the barriers he has erected around himself. Wracked with remorse at his genocide of the buggers, Ender searches for the reason the aliens allowed him to defeat them, knowing the answer will give him direction. As in most great speculative fiction, Card mines the depths of humanity’s philosophical and political ideas through Ender’s trials and discoveries. Exile brings together many drifting story lines from a number of other books in the series, so it’s not for the uninitiated. For those who are familiar with Ender and his world, this is a wonderful treat to be devoured whole in a gulp and then returned to later to digest at leisure.” -School Library Journal